Last bout for year to make or break leaders

Political editor, The Age

HAS Julia Gillard's comeback stalled and is Tony Abbott capable of lifting his own standing from the basement? These are the awkward questions for both sides of politics raised by today's Age/Nielsen poll.

The Prime Minister has consolidated the recovery in her own approval ratings, but Labor's primary vote has not budged for three months - and remains stubbornly in losing territory at 34 per cent.

While the Coalition continues to be in a winning position, the Liberal leader has sunk to a new record low - with an approval rating (where disapproval is subtracted from approval) of minus 24 per cent.

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Gillard was in this territory for five consecutive polls before engineering a steady recovery after the carbon tax came in in July - one that accelerated after the speech that began with the words: ''I will not be lectured by this man.''

Her position remains fragile and will be determined by how she is seen to manage multiple policy challenges in the months ahead, the biggest being finding the money to pay for big-spending priorities and still bring the budget back to surplus.

Abbott's predicament is more complicated - his ratings confirm a serious popularity problem, especially with women, yet the Coalition's primary-vote lead is emphatic.

While Gillard now has a two percentage-point edge as preferred prime minister with male voters, the gap when it comes to women is 16. Moreover, Abbott's approval rating is minus 16 for men and a staggering minus 32 for women.

The question for Coalition strategists to ponder is whether Abbott's unpopularity is dragging down its primary vote, and one way to find the answer is to look at his preferred PM rating (42 per cent) and the Coalition's primary vote (45 per cent). The three-point deficit suggests this should not be a cause for alarm - yet.

Abbott's dual challenge is to be more positive on the one hand and to be far more disciplined on the other. Indigenous affairs is one of his strong suits, yet he let himself down last week with loose language comparing urban Aborigines with ''authentic'' representatives of indigenous culture.

The imperative for both sides is to finish the year off on a high, so their troops go into the election year with confidence, which should make for an absorbing contest next week when they face off in Parliament for the last time before the Christmas break.